Page:Fruits and Farinacea the Proper Food of Man.djvu/41

Rh Pliny also, the Roman naturalist, says: "Mankind in the first ages subsisted on acorns;" and Galen—the celebrated Roman physician, who flourished in the second century of the Christian era—assures us, in his work on Human Aliment, that "acorns afford as good nourishment as many sorts of grain; that in ancient times men lived on acorns only; and that the Arcadians continued to eat them long after the rest of Greece had begun to make use of bread-corn." President de Goguet, in his work on the Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, observes: "The first generations of mankind subsisted chiefly on plants, roots, and fruits; of whose qualities they had no previous knowledge."

17. Dr. William Hillary, in his Inquiry into the Means of Improving Medical Knowledge, says: "Their food, during the first ages of the world, was taken from and chiefly consisted of vegetables, and their fruits and seeds, with the addition of milk from their flocks; and water was their drink." He also infers that, as their food was plain and simple, their diseases were also simple and few, and therefore more easily cured—either solely by the efforts of nature, or, when the assistance of art was necessary, by the help of a few simple medicines or applications—than they were afterwards, when diseases were increased, and more complicated by the various inventions of luxury. Porphyry, a Platonic philosopher of the third century,—a man of great talents and learning, and of very extensive research and observation,—investigated the subject of human diet with great care and diligence. He says: "The ancient Greeks lived entirely on the fruits of the earth."

18. Hippocrates and Celsus confirm these statements respecting the primitive regimen of mankind; and, in fact, "all writers of antiquity, of every nation,—historians, physicians, philosophers, and poets,—assert that the first generations of men, who lived nearly a thousand years, were perfectly natural and simple in their diet."

19. How long mankind continued to live upon the simple productions of the earth, we have no means of ascertaining. St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and other ancients, as well as moderns, maintain that all animal food was strictly forbidden before the Flood: but long before that event they had transgressed the law of God; and there can be little doubt that the flesh of animals had, for some time previously, formed a material part of their diet. We read, that "all flesh had corrupted his way upon the